Trans Galactic Insurance

Adventures of a Jump Space Accountant, Book 1

By: Andrew Moriarty

Narrated by: William Turbett

The Galactic Empire disappeared a lifetime ago. Jake Stewart doesn't care, he needs to earn a living.

He fled his station in the outer Belt, enrolled in the merchant academy, and snagged a scholarship. The future looks bright. But a crooked boss, some paperwork shenanigans, and a freeloading best friend put him in a bind.

When he's accused of a murder he didn't commit he goes on the run from the Planetary Militia. There's only his wits and a suspiciously helpful pretty girl between him and jail. Can he trust her to prove his innocence? Or does she have another agenda?

Tired of books where everything that moves gets shot? How about a book where people use their brains? If you like strategy over tactics, and thought before action, The Adventures of a Jump Space accountant series is for you

©2017 Andrew Moriarty (P)2022 Andrew Moriarty

The story sounds dated, but I really liked it.

Who uses whizbang in their dialect? My dad's dad? I felt for awhile that the story was something from the 1950's, but too much was more modern. But it's less of a story about technology, and more a tale of learning to stand on your two feet, and not be anyone's sucker/noob. You'll enjoy it!

Accounting in Space?! Yes!!!

Great characters and story line
Found myself locked in wanted to hear what happened to Jake. Despite the future setting the author does a great job making the characters personable and intriguing!

Fun read. Onward to book 2!

It's funny

It was funny. I recommended it to family. I don't know, I don't write reviews.

"We need to talk about Danny."

Jake, a hardworking young belter, is at the Merchant Academy on a scholarship. Poor and naive, he earns extra money by selling academic work to other students, an idea suggested by his wealthy friend, Bart, who also get him an insurance job, boring to most people but not Jake. But a false accusation leads to Jake's having to abandon his college course and go on the run.

This is a light comedy romp of the private fear and innocence versus betrayal, lies, murder, cynicism and wealth of corporate individuals. Sort of funny pathetic. Good basic concept and some nice futuristic ideas, like food coming in microwave colour codes trays, red, green and blue being the cheapest. A fair bit of technical detail but not overly intrusivd. But seriously lacking in character development which fitted with the flat, almost cartoon feel of the writing, and is further conveyed by the fine narration of William Turbett. Trans Galactic Insurance - the title alone makes this worth several stars - is a quick, easy fun read which is replete with head turning twists as it nears the conclusion but which would have benefited from better editing earlier where I am sure there were minor contradictions but which one as insufficiently motivated to go back and determine.

I enjoyed the story (which, for some inexplicable reason made me want to re-read Harry Harrison's very differently delicious Stainless Steel Rat), and am glad to have read it, but have no desire to continue the series.

Excellent

I really enjoyed this series. Excellent narration, compelling story, and unique concept. I've listened to this several times since I got these.

Who knew insurance was such a cut-throat business?

As a fan of sci-fi, I gotta say I really like this book. Although it's primarily a mystery book, the sci-fi elements it has play out as realistic, enough to help immerse the reader into the story.

The story is very much a murder mystery where the scapegoat has to prove his innocence, but instead of being some action hero macho man stereotype, he's just a college student who, while being a little naive, is trying to wrap his head around what happened. Instead of finding out about the murder and instantly switching into super sleuth mode, he freaks out and tries to come up with ideas to help him stay afloat which, as he acknowledges in the book, are short term at best.

The narrator does a good job with the different voices, switching between naive everyman, smug jock, seedy ship captain, and everything inbetween.

This book takes a realistic look at a situation like this and turns it into an engaging and immersive story... but set in space, of course.

Quietly Amusing

The first in a series and able to be read as a stand alone book. The story was quite good, the main character engaging, stumbling from disaster to disaster with interest in, how was he going to get out of this? This was a great novel and quite enjoyable.

Troublesome Narrator

The story was fine, a bit more of a YA feel than I expected.

The bigger problem I had was with the narrator. The narration is delivered with all the precision of a badly dubbed Japanese Kaiju movie. Flubs are even left in and the lines are repeated.

Not the kind of quality I normally find on Audible.

Different

This book is not the greatest piece of work ever...but I have been listening to a bunch of garbage lately, so I added a star...and it probably deserved just for the plot. I thought the plot was engaging, interesting, hard to predict..etc. The motivations of the various characters do seem to be a little business centric...so in that sense the book is disappointing...maybe its trying to push a Republican agenda, who knows. This point is really the major flaw in the book, but it can be overlooked.

Is it worth a credit, probably....I think the one dimensional aspect to the characters will be annoying to people, but it's fun ride otherwise.

Space and accounting

Not terrible, Starts as an almost excessively tween comedy, ends in a surprisingly hard-edged murder thriller. Heavy on the info-dumps as well, though they're at least relatively interesting infodumps. I got though this book over a fast and I have to say that it definitely makes accounting... interesting.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.